Blog

The Opportunities Party has released its first two policy priorities – making New Zealand fair again and boosting incomes by limiting immigration and increasing its quality. Here’s the logic for you to contemplate over Christmas.

We’ve had some questions about our immigration policy TOP Policy #2: Smarter Immigration released last week. Remember the TOP test for immigrants is:if you can improve our standard of living we welcome you. If not, thanks but no thanks.

One particular issue we raised is that we have too much low skilled, temporary migration. There are signs that this level of temporary migration is having an impact on the bottom end of our labour market, and we will set out the evidence in this blog.

Last week The Opportunities Party released its policy on economic migration. In short we conclude the situation is a mess as politicians have interfered and over-ridden a tried and tested immigration strategy that gives priority to migrants that boost the wellbeing of New Zealanders. The politicians have become obsessed with building a foreign education sector here and have sacrificed our immigration policy at the altar of that ambition.

The rules for engagement on TOP’s various online channels are really easy. Be civil and your comment &/or query will be respected. Don’t and you will get whatever you served up, back with interest. And after 3 opportunities you’ll simply be banned. That has been made clear from Day One. Pity Rodney Hide still doesn’t get it – that what he, Don Brash, and ACT represent is repulsive to most New Zealanders and there’s no way their nutty extremism will not be met with fire on our channels.

Attracting the right people

We already rely on migrants to a large degree – we have more than twice the OECD average of foreign born residents (19.5%) (OECD). However, we need to do a better job of attracting skilled migrants; when compared to countries with similar immigration policy such as Canada and Australia the overall skill base of New Zealand migrants is much lower (Melbourne University, 2014).

New Zealand is in a unique position of being able to cherry pick those that wish to immigrate to our shores. However, current trends see the government walking a tightrope, in terms of public opinion, on the record number of immigrants coming into New Zealand. In 2015/16 we had 69,100 official migrants (MBIE), the highest net gain in our history, and this number is only predicted to grow under the current scheme.

Apparently the Government is set to move unilaterally in the New Year on tax dodging by foreign corporates operating in New Zealand. This would follow unilateral action by both the UK and Australia and would pre-empt the glacially moving efforts of the OECD to achieve a multilateral approach. With Donald Trump in the White House anything could happen to that exercise in global cooperation.

INCOME TRENDS

While household incomes have gradually risen since 1982, wealthier families have seen a much greater rise compared to those that earn an average or low income. Recent trends show this is only getting worse, and those on the lowest incomes are falling further behind. In fact, those in the lowest 10% of earners (P10) are barely better off than they were 30 years ago, while the upper echelon (P90) has enjoyed a 50% rise in real incomes.

I'm standing outside Prime Minister John Key's mansion because in launching TOP's flagship policy, I want to make a point about inequality in New Zealand.

John Key and I are both wealthy people, but we don't pay our fair share of tax, only because we don't have to. TOP's flagship policy aims to fix that. A premise of The Opportunities Party is you cannot build sustainable prosperity on a base that is inherently unfair. Fairness and prosperity are soulmates.

We’ve had a lot of people get in touch about how TOP plans to measure prosperity. This issue is important but complex, and there are no easy answers. Instead the focus needs to be on the even more important issue of making sure that the way our economy is run actually makes us all more prosperous.